Unfortunately, in today's society, child abduction is becoming rampant and problematic such that sometimes intrusive protections for the sake of child welfare is adopted. This is evident in the use of video surveillance cameras in parking lots, malls and the like. Businesses such as Wal-Mart of Benton, Ark. have action plans to deal with abductions which might take place upon their premises. Additionally, businesses such as Chuck-E-Cheese™ child entertainment centers have safeguards in place to ensure the safety of children that enter their establishments. Their method is to manually stamp hands of people entering with like identification (such as an identification number only visible under UV light), and manually checking that persons leaving with a child have the same identification as the adult. Likewise, adults with intellectual development disabilities also need protection in that their mental state often causes confusion and their possible unauthorized removal from an area or premises.
Although the above methods are satisfactory, they have drawbacks. First, the methods are manual that obviously introduces human error in the identification process. Further, the cost of staffing a person strictly for identification is costly and relatively unreliable. Also, in the case of abduction, there is no evidentiary record of the suspect. Obviously, a business or system which possesses such an evidentiary record would cause hesitancy on the part of an abductor to actually commit the act of kidnapping.
Consequently, a need exits for a method that is automatic and reliable, and also which creates an evidentiary record of a suspect in the unfortunate event of abduction.